Digital intelligence is a trending term in the space of digital marketing analytics that needs to be demystified. Let's begin by defining what a digital marketing analytics platform is:

Digital marketing analytics platforms are technology applications used by customer intelligence ninjas to understand and improve consumer experiences. Prospecting, acquiring, and holding on to digital-savvy customers depends on understanding their multidevice behavior, and derived insight fuels marketing optimization strategies. These platforms come in different flavors, from stand-alone niche offerings, to comprehensive end-to-end vehicles performing functions from data collection through analysis and visualization.

However, not every platform is built equally from an analytical perspective. According to Brian Hopkins, a Forrester analyst, firms that excel at using data and analytics to optimize their digital businesses will together generate $1.2 trillion per annum in revenue by 2020. And digital intelligence — the practice of continuously optimizing customer experiences with online and offline data, advanced analytics and prescriptive insights — supports every insights-driven business. Digital intelligence is the antidote to the weaknesses of analytically immature platforms, leaving the world of siloed reporting behind and maturing towards actionable, predictive marketing. Here are a couple of items to consider:

Today's device-crazed consumers flirt with brands across a variety of interactions during a customer life cycle. However, most organizations seem to focus on website activity in one bucket, mobile in another, and social in . . . you see where I'm going. Strategic plans often fall short in applying digital intelligence across all channels — including offline interactions like customer support or product development.

Powerful digital intelligence uses timely delivery of prescriptive insights to positively influence customer experiences. This requires integration of data, analytics and the systems that interact with the consumer. Yet many teams manually apply analytics and deliver analysis via endless reports and dashboards that look retroactively at past behavior — begging business leaders to question the true value and potential impact of digital analysis.

As consumer behavioral needs and preferences shifts over time, the proportion of digital to non-digital interactions is growing. With the recent release of Customer Intelligence 360, SAS has carefully considered feedback from our customers (and industry analysts) to create technology that supports a modern digital intelligence strategy in guiding an organization to:

Enrich your first-party customer data with user level data from web and mobile channels. It's time to graduate from aggregating data for reporting purposes to the collection and retention of granular, customer-level data. It is individual-level data that drives advanced segmentation and continuous optimization of customer interactions through personalization, targeting and recommendations.

Keep up with customers through machine learning, data science and advanced analytics. The increasing pace of digital customer interactions requires analytical maturity to optimize marketing and experiences. By enriching first-party customer data with infusions of web and mobile behavior, and more importantly, in the analysis-ready format for sophisticated analytics, 360 Discover invites analysts to use their favorite analytic tool and tear down the limitations of traditional web analytics.

Automate targeting, channel orchestration and personalization. Brands struggle with too few resources to support the manual design and data-driven design of customer experiences. Connecting first-party data that encompasses both offline and online attributes with actionable propensity scores and algorithmically-defined segments through digital channel interactions is the agenda. If that sounds mythical, check out a video example of how SAS brings this to life.

The question now is - are you ready? Learn more here of why we are so excited about enabling digital intelligence for our customers, and how this benefits testing, targeting, and optimization of customer experiences.

We've been saying that the customer is queen or king for quite some time now. And in the coming year, that will be truer than ever. The customer determines where he or she finds information and which channel and which supplier gets the sale. And there is an abundance of these suppliers (certainly online). Customer loyalty, it seems, is as good as dead. Yes, of course, we are faithful to our local baker and tailor, but for items we don't buy everyday and where there is no personal relationship with the supplier (nor does there always need to be one), we don't really care where we order from. Right?

Today, many consumers make their choice based on only two criteria: price and reviews – the latter providing some confidence about product quality and supplier reliability. And it's an obvious choice. Why would you pay top price for an OEM device charger that you can get from a Chinese web shop for a fraction of the price – unless you need it tomorrow, of course? Virtually no supplier has a monopoly today, and you can switch to a new supplier with just one mouse click.

So does that leave all companies having to compete solely on price? No, that would create an unhealthy market situation. Aiming for good reviews is a great idea, of course, but is merely a partial solution. To encourage customer loyalty in the long term, you need to focus heavily on the last touch point in the customer journey. The three elements are essential in these efforts: data, analytics and real-time decisioning.

Determining the right data

Customers leave a data trail behind in various channels. This data enables you to build up a wealth of information about the customer. This is nothing new, but I have noticed that a lot of companies have difficulty in determining what data from this data stream they should add to the customer profile. By analysing the data, you can determine whether data can be assigned as a fixed value to the customer, or is of only temporary relevance, such as a location, for example. In addition, you can really get to know your customer by analysing this data, using this knowledge to predict behaviour and responding to this behaviour in real time.

Predicting behaviour

Using analytics to predict customer behaviour is the key to success in the last step of the customer journey. In this way, you can create the ultimate balance between customer service-driven interactions and marketing and sales-driven interactions. Just think how valuable it would be to know at this last touch point whether you should persuade the customer with your service, or use a combination offer with a product from the same line?

Helping customers make decisions in the moment

By using data strategically, you can predict where the customer has a need. You know what motivates him to actually make a purchase at that critical decision point. Responding smartly to this will increase customer satisfaction and make those customers more loyal. As a result, you will see that price and reviews are indeed important, but that customers still need a supplier who knows and recognises them, and responds to their needs.

The buzz

Machine learning techniques were developed as long ago as the 1950s, but with the advent of big data and large analytical engines, the prevalence and the ease of applying the techniques has increased.

Additionally, organisations now understand the value that analytics can bring, so are willing to place it front and center in their plans and invest more time and resources in exploring new and better techniques. Segmentation and predictive models, for instance, have proven themselves time and again in the marketing world, but to a certain extent, they require a higher degree of knowledge to understand. In some cases, a machine learning technique unburdens the user of the statistical work, but provides just as good an answer as a traditional technique. More people, with more data, trying to make more decisions lends itself to a technique that requires less manual intervention.

What it means for marketing

Organizations, large and small, can have huge, complex data that can from the latest advances in machine learning – banks have transaction records, telcos have call details, retailers have purchase records.

Take marketing in our omnichannel world as an example. There are huge amounts of customer interactions and there are business problems, such as attribution and optimizing the customer experience, that are perfect for the latest machine learning techniques. For real-time personalization of experience and real-time calculation of recommendations, great benefit can be gained from self-learning algorithms in reinforcement learning.

But it is important to remember that organizations also have many analytically driven challenges that are smaller, simpler and just as important and valuable to the bottom line of the organization. Again, for marketing, more traditional disciplines like segmentation and propensity modeling are still extremely useful, and organizations need to keep using capabilities like these to ensure the continued benefits from their use.

How SAS can help

SAS has embraced machine learning techniques for many years, and recently took a further step forward with the latest release of our SAS Customer Intelligence 360 suite of products. SAS has built a recommendation engine with the best of both worlds – a predictive model built using traditional techniques (logistic regression) and a machine learning algorithm (using naïve Bayes classifiers). Fortunately, your customers don’t need to understand these techniques – they just want your website to make better recommendations!

For the uninitiated, SAS 360 Engage enables organizations to interact with consumers by allowing them to create, manage and deliver digital content over web and mobile channels. Wait a minute. SAS does more than the analytics? That is correct. SAS 360 Engage is a marketing super force serving as a one-stop shop for data capture all the way through delivering highly-targeted, personalized digital experiences.

Being able to dynamically place content and offers into digital channels – across devices and points in time – is nothing new for savvy marketing brands focused on optimization. As customer journeys spread across fragmented touch points while customers are demanding seamless and relevant experiences, content-oriented marketers have been forced to reevaluate their strategies for engagement. But the complexity, pace and volume of modern marketing easily overwhelms traditional planning and design approaches that rely on historical conventions, myopic single-channel perspectives and sequential act-and-learn iteration.

Presently, marketers primarily use a variety of content optimization approaches that include A/B testing and multivariate testing. A/B testing, at its simplest, is a method of website or mobile optimization in which the conversion rates of two versions of a page are compared using visitor response rates. By tracking the way visitors interact with the content– the videos they watch, the buttons they click, or whether they sign up for a newsletter – you can infer which version of the content is most effective.

Due to the popularity of this technique, SAS 360 Engage supports A/B/n testing. A/B/n testing is an extension of A/B testing, where “N” refers to the number of versions being tested, anywhere from two versions to the “nth” version. For example, when a brand has more than one idea for what the ideal digital experience should be, A/B/n can be used to compare each hypothesis and produce an optimized decision based on data, not subjectivity.

Testing is attractive because it is efficient, measurable and serves as a machete cutting through the noise and assumptions associated with delivering effective experiences. In parallel, the evolving marketing landscape is driving a greater mandate for testing: to operate in more channels, handle more data and support more users. Testing must mature beyond traditional on-site experimentation to fully optimize a multifaceted customer journey.

The majority of today’s technologies for personalization have generally failed to effectively use data science to offer consumers a contextualized digital experience. Many of today’s offerings are based on simple rules-based segmentation to drive recommendations. Building off the benefits of multi-channel A/B/n testing, this is where SAS 360 Engage injects its analytical muscle to differentiate from other personalization technologies. Let's break this down:

At the conclusion of an A/B/n test, there is usually a winner and one or more losers.

Is there really one superior experience for your entire marketable audience? Is it possible that experiences should vary by segment?

Performing algorithmic segmentation sounds awesome, but who really has the time to do it? We have so many tests to run.

The time has arrived for predictive marketing to have its moment in the sun, and with Forrester recently naming SAS the leader in customer analytics, it's official - the 800-pound gorilla in advanced analytics is locked in on solving complex issues facing the space of data-driven marketing. Making digital personalization more relevant for target audiences is just like preparing a delicious meal; it all comes down to the ingredients and preparation process to rise to the occasion!

A beautiful and interpretable visualization is generated highlighting what is unique about this segment, as compared to everyone else who was exposed to the test. If the brand wants to target this audience in future campaigns, a single click populates this segment in the platform for future journey orchestration.

If you look closely at the image, you will note in the upper half of the report that the winner of the A/B/n test is variant A. However, the lower half of the report showcases a newly discovered segment. It turns out that when a specific customer segment with recent purchase, stay and amenity activity interacts with this hospitality brand, variant B produces better results. How did SAS 360 Engage do this? By applying automated firepower (i.e. algorithmic clustering) to produce this prescriptive and actionable insight. To learn more about this segment, marketers can profile the audience:

SAS 360 Engage was built with the recognition that some marketing teams don't have data scientists available, and have real needs for analytical automation. To improve upon the concept of A/B/n testing, augmenting this capability with automated, algorithmic segmentation with prescriptive results addresses an important need. Let's assume you've run an A/B/n test with four versions of a page, and variant A was crowned the champion. Wouldn't it be nice to know that if a specific segment arrived at your website, an alternative experience would facilitate a better result?

Under-utilized technology creates a drag on an organization. The ability to get more out of the tools you already use can increase the value of an existing investment, and that value grows as processes become more efficient and decisions are based on firmer foundations. Consider the facilities engineer at an […]

There's no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) is here and is rapidly gaining the attention of brands large and small. As I talk to customers and prospects, they are interested in understanding how AI and its subcomponents (cognitive computing, machine learning, or even deep learning) are being woven into various departments (marketing, sales, service and support) at organizations across industries.

Here are some examples of cognitive computing and machine learning today at organizations, and how these capabilities will enhance customer experience in the future.

I think it's important to start with a few foundational facts:

AI as a practice is not new – John McCarthy and others started their research into this area back in the 1950s.

AI and its subcomponents are rooted in predictive analytics (neural networks, data mining, natural language processing, etc., all have their beginnings here).

Automation and the use of supervised and unsupervised algorithms are crucial to machine learning and cognitive computing use cases.

Deep learning uses the concept of teaching and training to accomplish more advanced automation tasks. It’s important to note that deep learning is not as prevalent from a customer experience perspective as machine learning and cognitive computing. Let's take a look at what AI means for brands as the customer experience becomes the primary differentiator for marketing organizations.

For example, a SAS customer uses automation to provide a quicker response to service requests that come in to the brand's contact center. It can send an automated reply to service inquires, direct the customer to appropriate departments, and send customer responses back to the channel – all using SAS solutions. These capabilities reduces the number of replies that require human intervention and improves service response times. This same use case can be applied across industries such as retail, telecom, financial services and utilities. The end result? A happier customer and an improved customer experience.

Analytics: the core of machine learning

Analytics play an important role. Model retraining, the use of historical data and environmental conditions all serve as inputs into the supervised and unsupervised algorithms that machine learning uses. For example, some of our large telecom and financial services providers use data, customer journey maps and past patterns to be able to serve timely and relevant offers during customer interactions.

Many of our customers can do in less than one second, and are providing response and replies that are relevant and individualized. Another great example of machine learning is the development work that SAS is doing currently with regard to its marketing software.

Our customer intelligence solutions use embedded machine learning processes to make setting up activities and completing tasks in the software easier for analysts and marketers alike. For instance, the software will automatically choose the optimal customer segment and creative combinations for a campaign. It will also recommend the best time to follow up with a customer or segment and on the customer’s preferred devices. Machine learning also gives marketers the ability to understand how to use and modify digital assets for the most reach and optimal conversions.

The newest addition to artificial intelligence

Deep learning, a newer concept that relies on deep neural networks – is certainly something that is coming to the marketing and service realms. Many companies have started looking at how we teach and train software to accomplish complex activities – drive cars, play chess, make art (the list goes on). As for marketing, I believe we will see deep learning being used to run marketing programs, initiate customer service interactions or map customer journeys in detail.

These are just a few examples of how we are seeing AI improve the customer experience. You and I, as digitally empowered consumers, will certainly benefit from man and machine working together to automate the interactions that we have with brands on a daily basis. I urge you to keep an eye out for how brands big and small are automating the interactions they have with you – I think you will be pleasantly surprised with the outcome.

There's no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) is here and is rapidly gaining the attention of brands large and small. As I talk to customers and prospects, they are interested in understanding how AI and its subcomponents (cognitive computing, machine learning, or even deep learning) are being woven into various departments (marketing, sales, service and support) at organizations across industries.

Here are some examples of cognitive computing and machine learning today at organizations, and how these capabilities will enhance customer experience in the future.

I think it's important to start with a few foundational facts:

AI as a practice is not new – John McCarthy and others started their research into this area back in the 1950s.

AI and its subcomponents are rooted in predictive analytics (neural networks, data mining, natural language processing, etc., all have their beginnings here).

Automation and the use of supervised and unsupervised algorithms are crucial to machine learning and cognitive computing use cases.

Deep learning uses the concept of teaching and training to accomplish more advanced automation tasks. It’s important to note that deep learning is not as prevalent from a customer experience perspective as machine learning and cognitive computing. Let's take a look at what AI means for brands as the customer experience becomes the primary differentiator for marketing organizations.

For example, a SAS customer uses automation to provide a quicker response to service requests that come in to the brand's contact center. It can send an automated reply to service inquires, direct the customer to appropriate departments, and send customer responses back to the channel – all using SAS solutions. These capabilities reduces the number of replies that require human intervention and improves service response times. This same use case can be applied across industries such as retail, telecom, financial services and utilities. The end result? A happier customer and an improved customer experience.

Analytics: the core of machine learning

Analytics play an important role. Model retraining, the use of historical data and environmental conditions all serve as inputs into the supervised and unsupervised algorithms that machine learning uses. For example, some of our large telecom and financial services providers use data, customer journey maps and past patterns to be able to serve timely and relevant offers during customer interactions.

Many of our customers can do in less than one second, and are providing response and replies that are relevant and individualized. Another great example of machine learning is the development work that SAS is doing currently with regard to its marketing software.

Our customer intelligence solutions use embedded machine learning processes to make setting up activities and completing tasks in the software easier for analysts and marketers alike. For instance, the software will automatically choose the optimal customer segment and creative combinations for a campaign. It will also recommend the best time to follow up with a customer or segment and on the customer’s preferred devices. Machine learning also gives marketers the ability to understand how to use and modify digital assets for the most reach and optimal conversions.

The newest addition to artificial intelligence

Deep learning, a newer concept that relies on deep neural networks – is certainly something that is coming to the marketing and service realms. Many companies have started looking at how we teach and train software to accomplish complex activities – drive cars, play chess, make art (the list goes on). As for marketing, I believe we will see deep learning being used to run marketing programs, initiate customer service interactions or map customer journeys in detail.

These are just a few examples of how we are seeing AI improve the customer experience. You and I, as digitally empowered consumers, will certainly benefit from man and machine working together to automate the interactions that we have with brands on a daily basis. I urge you to keep an eye out for how brands big and small are automating the interactions they have with you – I think you will be pleasantly surprised with the outcome.

There's no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) is here and is rapidly gaining the attention of brands large and small. As I talk to customers and prospects, they are interested in understanding how AI and its subcomponents (cognitive computing, machine learning, or even deep learning) are being woven into various departments (marketing, sales, service and support) at organizations across industries.

Here are some examples of cognitive computing and machine learning today at organizations, and how these capabilities will enhance customer experience in the future.

I think it's important to start with a few foundational facts:

AI as a practice is not new – John McCarthy and others started their research into this area back in the 1950s.

AI and its subcomponents are rooted in predictive analytics (neural networks, data mining, natural language processing, etc., all have their beginnings here).

Automation and the use of supervised and unsupervised algorithms are crucial to machine learning and cognitive computing use cases.

Deep learning uses the concept of teaching and training to accomplish more advanced automation tasks. It’s important to note that deep learning is not as prevalent from a customer experience perspective as machine learning and cognitive computing. Let's take a look at what AI means for brands as the customer experience becomes the primary differentiator for marketing organizations.

For example, a SAS customer uses automation to provide a quicker response to service requests that come in to the brand's contact center. It can send an automated reply to service inquires, direct the customer to appropriate departments, and send customer responses back to the channel – all using SAS solutions. These capabilities reduces the number of replies that require human intervention and improves service response times. This same use case can be applied across industries such as retail, telecom, financial services and utilities. The end result? A happier customer and an improved customer experience.

Analytics: the core of machine learning

Analytics play an important role. Model retraining, the use of historical data and environmental conditions all serve as inputs into the supervised and unsupervised algorithms that machine learning uses. For example, some of our large telecom and financial services providers use data, customer journey maps and past patterns to be able to serve timely and relevant offers during customer interactions.

Many of our customers can do in less than one second, and are providing response and replies that are relevant and individualized. Another great example of machine learning is the development work that SAS is doing currently with regard to its marketing software.

Our customer intelligence solutions use embedded machine learning processes to make setting up activities and completing tasks in the software easier for analysts and marketers alike. For instance, the software will automatically choose the optimal customer segment and creative combinations for a campaign. It will also recommend the best time to follow up with a customer or segment and on the customer’s preferred devices. Machine learning also gives marketers the ability to understand how to use and modify digital assets for the most reach and optimal conversions.

The newest addition to artificial intelligence

Deep learning, a newer concept that relies on deep neural networks – is certainly something that is coming to the marketing and service realms. Many companies have started looking at how we teach and train software to accomplish complex activities – drive cars, play chess, make art (the list goes on). As for marketing, I believe we will see deep learning being used to run marketing programs, initiate customer service interactions or map customer journeys in detail.

These are just a few examples of how we are seeing AI improve the customer experience. You and I, as digitally empowered consumers, will certainly benefit from man and machine working together to automate the interactions that we have with brands on a daily basis. I urge you to keep an eye out for how brands big and small are automating the interactions they have with you – I think you will be pleasantly surprised with the outcome.

In April, SAS 360 Discover was introduced at SAS Global Forum 2016. Since my career started at SAS over five years ago, I have been anticipating this important announcement. In my opinion, this is a major breakthrough for the space of digital intelligence.

In my first year working at SAS, I learned of research and development to address industry needs for digital marketers. Although technologies from Google, Adobe and others address web analytics with measurement reporting, there was a shortcoming.

Historically, web analytics has always had a huge data challenge to cope with since its inception. And when the use case for analysts is to run summary reports, clickstream data is normalized:

It nicely organizes raw clickstream into small, relevant data for reporting. However, this approach presents challenges when performing customer-centric analysis. Why? Holistic customer analysis requires the collection and normalization of digital data at an individual level. This is one of the most important value props of SAS 360 Discover.

The data is prepared to contextualize all click activity across a customer's digital journey in one table row, including a primary key to map to all visits across browsers and devices. The data table view shifts from being tall and thin to short and wide. The beauty of this is it enables sophisticated analysis to prioritize what is important, and what isn't. This concept of data collection and management is considered a best practice for advanced customer analytics.

How many marketers do you know who wake up in the morning and claim they can't wait to hear about how analysts are spending 80 percent of their time preparing raw web behavior data, rather than focusing on analysis and actionable insights? None, you say? Exactly! Wouldn't you rather hear your marketing analysts spend their time doing this?

I have always appreciated SAS for what it can do with structured, semi-structured, and unstructured information, but there has always been one dependency – where do I point SAS to obtain the originating data? SAS 360 Discover eliminates this requirement, and provides data collection mechanisms for your brand's website(s) and mobile apps.

In addition, the raw semi-structured data streams SAS natively collects are run through a pre-built relational data model using SAS Data Management for various forms of contextualization that stretch far beyond traditional web analytic use cases.

The output of this data model schema summarizes all digital visitor behavior at this level of detail:

Customers.

Anonymous visitors.

Sessions (or visits).

Interactions (or clicks/hits).

The data model schema will allow for additional configurations and introduction of other digital data sources to accommodate your organization's evolving needs. More importantly, the benefits of the output are profound, and listed below is a summary of SAS 360 Discover benefits:

Digital data normalization to support online and offline data stitching of customers.

When offline data is residing in your organization's data warehouse, information is available at the customer level (not a click or hit level). That's a problem when you want to link it with web or app data. The amount of time analysts spend reshaping raw HIT extracts from their web analytics solution is astonishing, and quite difficult. Customer analysis requires online/offline data stitching, and overcoming this obstacle was a problem SAS set out to solve.

The reporting remains critical as an entry stage for analytics. SAS believes there should be no limit to how many reports and dashboards can be produced to meet business objectives. In other words, unlimited ad hoc reports using SAS Visual Analytics, which is the analysis tool that is packaged with SAS 360 Discover.

Brands gain a competitive edge if they stop perceiving customer engagement as a series of discrete interactions and instead see it as customers do: a set of interrelated interactions that, when combined, make up the customer experience. By folding in all known customer level information into a common hub, SAS can analyze, score and take intelligent, contextual actions across channels.

The path to digital intelligencefrom traditional web analytics covers the diversity of data, advanced analytic techniques, and injection of prescriptive insights to support decision-making and marketing orchestration. Digital intelligence is a transformation — making it a competitive differentiator. It aims to convert brands to become:

Customer-centric rather than channel-centric

Focused on enterprise goals as opposed to departmental

Enabled for audience activation and optimization

Analytical workhorses

I suspect you would love to see demonstrations of the data that SAS 360 Discover collects from websites and mobile apps in action:

In addition, here is the on-demand video of the SAS Global Forum 2016 keynote presentation of SAS Customer Intelligence 360.

As a marketing analyst at heart, it is extremely gratifying to share my excitement for SAS 360 Discover. The time for predictive customer marketing in the digital ecosystem is here, and the 800-pound gorilla in advanced analytics has just unleashed your new secret weapon.

“And the weather yesterday was a sunny 18oC with warm spells in the south and showers in the north. This is similar to the pattern we saw last Thursday.” Imagine if the weather forecast only restated what happened in the past -- would we bother waiting until the end of […]